Henry takes cue from Hillary

Graham Henry takes off on flight SQ317 from Heathrow today knowing he must raise his game to unscaled heights if the Lions are to reclaim their place at the summit of world rugby.

New Zealanders have a track record of peaking in high places but the former Auckland headmaster will draw inspiration from more than Sir Edmund Hillary for rugby's equivalent of an Everest expedition.

As he sets off on the tour of a lifetime, Henry has as much in common with a Swede whom he has never met as he has with the renowned mountaineer.

If Henry manages to do for the Lions what Sven Goran Eriksson is already doing in a different football field, then a place awaits the Kiwi in the coaching pantheon alongside Carwyn James and Ian McGeechan.

There are similarities between Henry and his England soccer counterpart. They are both middle-aged foreign coaches running the biggest international teams in British sport.

But where Eriksson can afford to take his time, Henry has seven weeks before the most expensive, best-equipped Lions squad of all are consigned to the breaker's yard, irrespective of their fate in the three-Test series against Australia.

Win it and Wales' adopted coach will have put the best of British and Irish back where they were 30 years ago - on top of the world.

Success would earn their play-ers a maximum of £28,000 a man. So, for winning all 10 matches, they will earn as much in seven weeks as Sol Campbell would have made in two and a bit days had Spurs accepted his demands. The Lions are not about money.

If they lose, history, in its cold, dispassionate way, will judge Henry to have been very good at running a very good Auckland team but not good enough when it really mattered, despite taking the pick of an England squad on the top of their form.

Henry said: 'I know I will need to coach at a higher level than I've ever done before and that, in itself, is a great challenge. If we're going to beat Australia, we'll have to improve as individuals right across the board.'

His remorseless quest for self-improvement has extended to taking note of Eriksson's work with England.

'I'm interested in what he's doing because he's obviously making a big improvement,' said Henry. 'I've been very impressed by his relaxed, calm manner.

'I realise his pond is far bigger than mine but there are similarities between us, as foreigners coaching the team which the majority of the country view as the most important. You're always trying to pick up new ideas which is why I've read Sir Alex Ferguson's book on his success at Manchester United.'

The Lions are the biggest deal in rugby, a unique amalgam of British and Irish players, and the trick this time will be to weld the best of the Celts to the English majority and produce a Test 22 superior to anything in the Six Nations.

If the series started tomorrow, England would surely claim 10 places in the starting line-up, the exceptions being Brian O'Driscoll, Rob Howley, Tom Smith, Keith Wood and Scott Quinnell.

Instead, there are six matches to be played before the Tests begin, and by then the Lions are liable to have been hit by the unexpected as well as by injuries.

The last tour, to South Africa four years ago, is a case in point. The Test props, by common consent, were supposed to be the English pair, Graham Rowntree and Jason Leonard.

Instead, they were swept aside by Smith, the whispering Scot, and Paul Wallace, the low-slung Irishman. Stand by, therefore, for the unexpected.

For Australia, the coming weeks will be the supreme test of their ability to replace former great players with new ones.

They have still to replace Tim Horan, their front row has just taken another buckling with Bill Young a hobbling non-starter and their dependence on the wonder-fully inventive Stephen Larkham at fly half is even heavier than the Lions' on Jonny Wilkinson.

Yet, let it not be forgotten that at Twickenham last November, the Wallabies finished with 13 men and it took England until the eighth minute of injury-time to scrape past them - and then only after the video referee had spent an eternity confirming the legality of Dan Luger's touchdown.